Portail HAL Paris School of Economics (PSE)
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Informing the uninformed, sensitizing the informed: The two sides of consumer environmental awareness
No full textInternational audienceHow do environmental information and awareness interact to improve environmental quality by changing consumer behavior and firm strategies? This article provides theoretical insights using an original differentiation model within a general framework whose specific cases have been studied previously. On the demand side, only informed consumers differentiate brown from green product quality, while uninformed consumers consider these perfect substitutes. Moreover, all informed consumers value the green product and devalue the brown product due to an aversion effect but are heterogeneous in their environmental awareness. On the supply side, two firms offer different environmental qualities and compete on price. We consider two types of environmental campaigns: increasing the number of informed consumers and increasing the environmental awareness of informed consumers. We show that these campaigns crucially determine three market configurations: segmented; fragmented, with a brown product that appeals to both uninformed consumers and a fraction of informed consumers; and covered. Assuming that the greenest consumer behavior is abstention, we find that a situation where all consumers are informed and some are highly environmentally aware is not necessarily the greenest. Depending on the aversion effect, the campaign organizer’s budget, and their relative cost-effectiveness, information and awareness-raising campaigns require a judicious mix
Collusion in bidding markets: The case of the French public transport industry
No full textInternational audienceWe explore empirically the impact of the market sharing collusive practices that were implemented in the French public transportation industry between 1994 and 1999. We build a structural model of bidding markets where innovating firms compete for the market and have the ability to spread the benefits of their innovation through all markets on which they are active. Each local competitive environment shapes the distribution of the prices (the bids) paid by public authorities to transport operators. We recover empirically the distribution of prices and innovation shocks and we show that collusive practices had overall a limited impact on prices. Firms were in reality more interested in avoiding significant financial risks inherent to the activity, as well as the high cost of preparing a tender proposal. As a by-product, we perform a counterfactual analysis that allows us to simulate how an increase in firms’ innovation reduces prices significantly
Les sentiers de la transition énergétique : de l’épuisement des ressources à la gloire du recyclage
No full textInternational audienceThis article summarises research in the field of natural resource economics. It aims to present the issues at stake for energy systems related to resource scarcity. It examines the challenges and opportunities associated with the energy transition, highlighting the interactions between the exploitation of fossil and mineral resources and the development of renewable energies. Particular attention is paid to the crucial role of recycling, analysing its determinants, market organisation and the public policies likely to promote its deployment. Finally, the article explores the economic links between primary and secondary raw materials, as well as their impact on the dynamics of the energy transition, while considering environmental and regulatory constraints.Cet article propose une synthèse des travaux de recherche en économie des ressources naturelles. Son objectif est de présenter les enjeux énergétiques liés à la disponibilité des ressources. Il examine les défis et les opportunités associés à la transition énergétique en mettant en lumière les interactions entre l'exploitation des ressources fossiles et minérales et le développement des énergies renouvelables. Une attention particulière est accordée au rôle crucial du recyclage, en analysant ses déterminants, son organisation de marché et les politiques publiques susceptibles de promouvoir son déploiement. Enfin, l'article explore les liens économiques entre les matières premières et secondaires, ainsi que leurs impacts sur la dynamique de la transition énergétique, tout en tenant compte des contraintes environnementales et réglementaires
Zola's “Ladies Paradise” and the “creative destruction” theory
No full textInternational audienceZola’s Ladies Paradise may be read as a romance. A poor young woman is hired as a salesperson by a tycoon who is launching the first department store, the “ladies paradise”, in mid-19th century Paris. After several twists and turns, inventive enough for having inspired several modern-day filmmakers, they fall in love and marry. Behind this love story, however, the novel is also to be read as a deep reflection on economic progress, showing, in particular, how a major innovation may fulfil the dreams of some, the mid- and high-bourgeoisie customers or the newly hired white-collars and salespersons, while destroying the life of others, the traditional neighbouring merchant families outcompeted by the new store.Published the year of Marx’s death, the novel echoes his concerns about the social consequences of capitalist growth. Despite the tragic description of shops and families displaced by the swelling department store, however, hope and faith in the future set the tone of the novel, unlike Zola’s usual sombre painting of the society around him. Far-sightedly, this novel foresees the theory that would be famously put forward 70 years later by the economist Joseph Schumpeter, according to which economic “creative destruction” is the essence of capitalism and the root of economic progress
Life and Death in a Changing City: Mortality Patterns and Inequalities in Paris, 1890–1949
No full textOver the past two centuries, European metropolises have transformed from urban graveyards to healthy cocoons. Despite its critical role in the history of longevity, this evolution remains underexplored due to limited detailed data. We leverage a newly harmonized dataset of high-quality, cause-specific mortality records to examine the rapid increase in life expectancy in Paris during the first half of the 20th century. Using a consistent cause-of-death classification from 1890 to 1949, we show that infectious diseases—particularly tuberculosis and respiratory infections—accounted for 60–70 percent of the 25-year gain in life expectancy at age 1, with mortality reductions among children and young adults driving most of these improvements. We also document a profound shift in the causes behind the sex gap in life expectancy, from infectious diseases to cardiovascular and cancer-related causes. Furthermore, our analysis of cause-specific and socioeconomic data for Paris's 80 neighborhoods reveals pronounced social gradients in infectious mortality, with the poorest areas suffering the highest rates. These disparities widened during the early phase of the tuberculosis mortality decline, favoring wealthier areas, but narrowed in subsequent phases as public health improvements reached poorer neighborhoods
Bubbles and Crashes with Partially Sophisticated Investors
No full textNational audienceWe analyze bubbles and crashes in a model in which some investors are partially sophisticated. While the expectations of such investors are endogenously determined in equilibrium, these are based on a coarse understanding of the market dynamics. We highlight how such investors may endogenously switch from euphoria to panic and how this may lead to equilibrium bubbles and crashes even in a purely speculative market in which information is complete and it is commonly understood that the bubble cannot grow forever. We also show how this setting can match stylized empirical facts, and we investigate whether bubbles may last longer when the share of fully rational traders increases
Total hip arthroplasty, associated rehabilitation care and the COVID-19 pandemic in France
No full textInternational audienceThis study investigates the Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) activity and the associated rehabilitation care in France over the period 2013-2022, with particular attention to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, scheduled THA activity was 17% lower than predicted based on the 2013–2019 trend (−19,000 THAs). In 2022, this activity was close to the pre-2019 trend, but there has been no catch-up of scheduled THAs that did not occur in 2020 and 2021. There is no obvious explanation for this absence of catch-up. In addition, in 2020, THA activity for recent trauma was only 3.1% lower than predicted based on the 2013–2019 trend. Activity in 2022 shows a return to the pre-2019 trend, without any catch-up effect, as would be expected in such a case. Finally, the proportion of scheduled THAs followed by an associated rehabilitation stay declined sharply in 2020 (−4 percentage points compared to 2019) whereas the downward trend in this proportion had previously been much slower (−10 percentage points from 2013 to 2019). These results underscore the major effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical activity, though further investigation is needed to fully understand the long-term effects on patients' health and life expectancy
The vicious circle of xenophobia: immigration and right wing populism
No full textInternational audienceWe investigate the bidirectional relationship between immigration and right-wing populism, which we characterize as a self-reinforcing dynamic process where anti-immigrant rhetoric and populist policies lead to a deterioration in the average education and skill level of immigrants. The deterioration in the ratio of high-skill to low-skill immigrants in turn fuels populist support and anti-immigration attitudes, creating what we call “the vicious circle of xenophobia.” We review some historical and contemporary studies that are suggestive of such a vicious circle. In particular, recent cross-country evidence shows that low-skill immigration tends to exacerbate populism, whereas high-skill immigration tends to mitigate it. Conversely, populist policies and xenophobic attitudes have a strong repulsive effect on highly skilled immigrants and result in adverse immigrant selection. We use the empirical results from those studies to inform a theoretical model of joint determination of immigrants’ skill ratio and right-wing populism levels. The model displays multiple equilibria, with the inferior equilibrium—corresponding to our vicious circle—characterized by high levels of right-wing populism and a high proportion of low-skill workers among immigrants. In this framework, structural trends such as Internet penetration, economic erosion of the middle class, demographic pressure from poor countries as well as adverse cyclical shocks make the good, efficient equilibrium less likely and the inferior equilibrium of explosive populism and adverse immigrants’ selection more likely
Les Ukrainiennes en Europe : exil, passage et refuge au temps d’une guerre européenne
No full textRubrique : Le point sur : Exil, passage, refugesInternational audienceL’enquête « Voices of Ukraine » (VOU), initiée sur les réseaux sociaux en 2022 par une équipe de chercheuses et de chercheurs et un organisme de sondage, donne la parole aux exilé⋅e⋅s ukrainien⋅ne⋅s dispersé⋅e⋅s en Europe. Depuis l’Allemagne, la Pologne ou la France, principalement, les Ukrainien⋅ne⋅s déplacés par la guerre entre leur pays et la Russie reviennent sur leurs expériences du passage des frontières, leur installation dans les pays d’accueil, les obstacles rencontrés pour leur intégration, et leurs craintes et leurs espoirs concernant la guerre en Ukraine